You Scream, I Scream, We all Scream for Ice Cream!

When my wife and I married we knew we wanted to have children, but until we had our son, we weren't as active in our neighborhood as we could have been. We attended block parties, helped out when anyone needed a hand and actually knew all of our neighbor's names - at least on our block. However, we did not actively invite or engage our neighbors in our activities. Who would want to hang out with a young couple when they had kids and baseball practice and soccer and t-ball? As such, my wife and I spent time seeing movies, going to dinner and enjoying our time together in our town, but not really on our street. Enter our son. He has single handedly brought back pears (neither my wife nor I had eaten a pear in years until my son began eating them) and corn. He also has brought back the idea of just sitting on our front yard, drawing with chalk on the sidewalk and simply hanging out with our neighbors.


We were doing just that two weeks ago when we heard the sounds of America circa 1975. "It's A Small World" came closer and closer until the Ice Princess arrived on our doorstep. I had read about ice cream trucks in my son's books, but until now, we had never been able to actually share the experience in real-life. I screamed to my wife to bring out some money and explained to our son what was happening. He could not believe he could get any ice cream he wanted from the nice ice cream lady. After we bought our ice cream we sat on the step eating it together. Seeing my son's smile as he ate was priceless and so each Saturday, we return to our front stoop, waiting for the Ice Princess to pay us a visit. It's a reminder of Americana and a memory of a lifetime.